


Compelling

by deathwailart



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/F, Femslash February, Masturbation, Mild Sexual Content, Renegade Commander Shepard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-28
Updated: 2015-02-28
Packaged: 2018-03-15 15:38:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3452582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Compelling, it's the only word Liara can think of to describe Asteria Shepard, survivor of Mindoir and butcher of Torfan but it still seems to fall short.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Compelling

Compelling isn't quite the right word to describe Asteria Shepard but anything else Liara can think of seems to fall short as she browses through the records about the woman, unable to sleep in the aftermath of Noveria. She doesn't want to think about the hurt that threatens to swallow her, the anger that makes her hands shake so she doesn't, she's learned well enough how to separate her emotions from the task at hand, from the facts, or she's learned as best as an asari of her age can on all those long digs at Prothean sites.  
  
She thinks about the last vestiges of the rachni burned away at Asteria's hands, her tight jaw, her squared shoulders and looks at the few pictures that document the Siege of Torfan where she made her name. It should make her shudder, Asteria wasn't named a butcher for nothing and all the accounts she can find should – and sometimes do – turn her stomach but she remembers all that she's been taught, the long years of study about separating fact from feeling. It's difficult enough when the Protheans fascinate her the way that they do, it's even harder when Asteria Shepard stands before her making choices that Liara already knows will shape the course of history.  
  
It's the rachni that make her wonder, not the killing of her mother but after, the commando the very last queen spoke through, what Liara and Wrex both said on the matter and the other bits of Asteria's history that she picks apart. Will there be a Liara one day to defend Asteria? Will someone see the parallels between them? Shaped by forces outwith their control, made into something they might not have been had fate dealt them a less cruel hand.  
  
She tries to imagine what it must have been like on Mindoir, to go from a peaceful life to your home burning and ships filling the sky. There was no sour yellow note for Asteria but there would have been fire, they all know how much batarians like flame-throwers, almost as much as they like to drag away slaves. Did Asteria have to watch as her mother screamed and wept? Was her father gunned down before her eyes? There aren't many survivor stories from Mindoir, perhaps for good reason, humanity was so new to space and to witness that sort of carnage so young has to have left a deeper scar than the one that cuts through her brow, the one that's fresh and raw in some of the images, leaving a trail of blood from above her eye to her cheek. She doesn't look like the Asteria Liara knows in those images. She looks like something else, not even a person; there are stories in the human myths that she's browsed, the angels and archangels and it's fanciful but she can almost see it when Asteria stands with her red hair, her red armour, her red blood, silhouetted by flame.  
  
Did she think it was right to burn them? To fight to the last man even sacrificing her own in order to stop them? Liara can't defend some of what she did, it goes against her own codes, if the stories and rumours of her shooting those who surrendered are true but so few survived Mindoir and none of them seemed to escape without lasting scars. That poor girl that Asteria was gentle with, all of them looking on as she reached out to her and Asteria had trembled, Liara had seen it, all of them newly returned from the mission on Feros.  
  
Would it burn to kiss Asteria? Her cheeks heat when she thinks about it, glancing over to check the lock on the little quarters she's been given behind the medbay to work in peace. Asteria has a focus Liara envies, setting her mind to something and getting it done, no matter how impossible it seems and what would it be like, she wonders as she manages to slip a hand inside her trousers, beneath her underwear, a tight fit but it matches how illicit this feels. She bites her lip, circling her clit with a finger and imagining that it's Asteria and her breathing quickens. Would Asteria pin her down? Would she take what she wanted and leave Liara longing for more or would she be offered those rare moments where her guard drops. She feels caught in Asteria's orbit, unable to help herself until she has a moment alone to think about it with a clear head, a moment like now when she knows that yes, it's unexpected and wonderful and terrifying all at once, but not for one moment is it unwelcome. She could have stopped Asteria at any time and the commander has stepped back, younger in years but older in many other ways, experienced where Liara is not and each time she's wanted her to keep going, to go further and alone, in the dark, her own imagination has run wild.  
  
She presses her thighs together, eyes on that picture of Asteria, the set of her jaw and those wild eyes. _She laughed_ , one account said and _so many bodies, she just kept going, if you fell behind you were left behind_. Asteria carves a bloody path through whatever resistance stands in her way and it's...  
  
It's compelling, it's the only word she can think when her breath catches on a moan, when she comes too quickly, almost surprised by it, with Asteria's name on her lips, soft enough to hopefully have woken no one.  
  
She doesn't want to wait any longer. Asteria hasn't pushed her but she's ready, she knows that and she knows what she wants. She's already joined their minds, left dazed by it each time and she can't think of anything else she'd ever want more than that, the two of them in Asteria's cabin. It helps her to sleep after, when she closes the computer, undressing quickly to curl up in the dark, too sated and tired to think of her own anguish.  
  
She'll tell Asteria tomorrow when she does her rounds, she'll tell her and maybe even be so bold as to kiss her and see if she really does burn. She hopes she does.


End file.
